Life Happens: Lose the labels

Some labels are good things. For instance, I don’t recommend ignoring labels that say things like “Hazardous if Swallowed,” “Electrified Fence” and “Rated R for adult language, nudity, graphic violence, sexual content.”

(Maybe that last one could be simplified for some parents out there who aren’t getting the message:
“Rated R: Do NOT take your young kids to see 'Deadpool'!”)

These labels have a purpose. They keep us from poisoning ourselves, french-frying our nervous system or having our in-laws listen to our kids repeating movie dialogue that would make Quentin Tarantino blush. These are useful labels, designed to make life, if not easier, then at least livable.

There are other labels, however, I could live without. They are either designed to be hateful and hurtful, like “Fatty” or “Titans fan,” or they are easy outs for people who don’t want to think for themselves.

It’s so easy to wrap an entire group of people up in one bundle and slap a label on them because then you don’t have to go to the trouble of thinking about the fact that every single person in that bundle has her or his own story, one that is different than every other person in that bundle.

Oh, I’m guilty of labeling, too. We all are. It’s much easier for me to label all Murfreesboro drivers as crack-smoking psychotics, when, in fact, it was only those three truckers who decided to “run” the red light at Middle Tennessee and Church, blocking the intersection and causing Horatio Hornblower to have an auditory aneurysm in the car behind me because I wouldn’t leap out into traffic that was coming from three different directions.

Yes, Horatio, I know the light is green, but I’m not going to commit car hara-kiri just so you can get out of the Krystal’s parking lot before your little burgers get cold and the cheese glues them to the bottoms of their little boxes.

I got a real label-mistaking moment last week. I’m a tail-end baby boomer who grew up with a hard core hippie older brother. I was also a hellion in high school, and the only reason I never showed up in jail reports is because there were severely overworked angels given to me on special assignment duties until I finally got smart, grew up and got over it.

Stir those factors in with a general anti-establishment mentality, and I have to admit — my respect for officers of the law was something less than, well, respectful. If you can think of a negative label for an officer of the law, I used it.

I’ve grown out of that, too. I’ve worked with at least five sheriffs and eight chiefs of police over my newspaper career, and countless troopers, patrolmen and deputies. While there have certainly been some who fit that ugly, anti-establishment, post-Ferguson image of corrupt, bigoted bullies with guns, it was a very, very few. The majority of the LEOs I’ve dealt with have been amazing.

Those of you who don’t get to read all of the police reports don’t realize how often “excessive force” is NOT used when it could be. I’ve read hundreds of reports in which officers and deputies tackle an armed assailant, one they could probably justifiably shoot from a distance. But they don’t.

If you don’t have a scanner, you don’t know about cops who got called out because kids were throwing snowballs at cars, and you probably don’t know they ended up playing in the snow with the kids, away from the cars. One bad incident can ruin the public image of a very good force.

Because of labels.

I was a little nervous when I went out to the Sheriff’s Office Feb. 23 for the first Citizens Academy class. Let’s be honest here — as the crime-beat reporter, I’ve had to cover some rough issues being handled, or mishandled at the RCSO. I wasn’t too sure how I was going to be received.

OK, that’s not true. I told everybody I knew where I was going, so if I didn’t come home, they’d know where to start looking for my body.

But instead of a hall full of hostile Buford Pussers, I got to meet many nice officers of the law. They were funny. They were intelligent. They were enthusiastic about giving the everyday person a glimpse of what life is like behind the badge.

I’m looking forward to the next four months and getting to put faces to the names I am writing about all of the time. But what I’m looking forward to the most is getting to remove the labels and meeting the individuals beneath each one.

And doughnuts.

I’m also really looking forward to doughnuts, and I’m hoping that is one of those label/cliché’/stereotypes that has more than a grain of truth (or sugar) behind it.

You can reach Mary Reeves at 615-278-5109. You can follow her on Twitter @MaryReevesDNJ. And if you are Horatio Hornblower, you can hope and pray you don’t decide to go beep beep batty the night I’m doing my ride-along.